


Offspring

by idrilswritings (idrilhadhafang)



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fatherhood, Heroine/Villain Offspring, Motherhood, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 12:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19084912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilswritings
Summary: What if a heroine and a villain had a daughter together?





	Offspring

“She’s beautiful.”

That was what Jamie Jackson said even as she cradled her small daughter in her arms. Her daughter’s father, Arkos, stood near them, seeming almost hesitant to approach before Jamie turned towards him.

”Go on, Arkos,” Jamie said. “Go to her.”

The man who was so hated and feared reached tentatively down towards his baby daughter, almost like he was afraid that she would somehow shatter if he picked her up wrong. It was in that moment that Jamie couldn’t help but feel a tug of affection towards her. “She’s not glass. She won’t shatter.”

”Babies are breakable by default.” Carefully, Arkos picked her up, where she looked over at Arkos and Jamie both like she was taking them both in, trying to understand who they were. Arkos spoke. “I know what it’s like to take a life. I never knew what it was like to create one. She may be the sole thing that’s right since I set out on this mad quest.”

”Then you don’t have to continue it. Why would you?”

Arkos was silent for a while. Then he spoke. “For our daughter’s sake. Both of you deserve a better future than what may be given you.”

Jamie spoke. “Don’t go this way.”

Arkos was quiet for a long while. Then, “I still have work to do, and miles to go before I sleep. I can’t give up now.”

”You can come home,” Jamie said. “Live with us. Raise our daughter together.”

”I wish I could say I was done.”

”She needs both of us.”

”She needs you most of all.”

”So you’re just running away?” Jamie said. “All this, all of it, and you’re slipping back into old patterns?”

The baby seemed to be distressed by the arguing because she began to cry. Jamie rocked her, murmured softly, comfortingly to her. Arkos looked over her before saying, “You won’t be alone, little one. Know this. The road ahead will be hard, I know that much, but you will never be alone. Never doubt what you have done, for all decisions have a purpose.” A beat. “And when they see what you’ve become, it will be beautiful.”

Jamie swallowed. 

“And don’t doubt what you’ve done either, Jamie.” Arkos leaned his forehead against hers, a gesture that allowed Jamie to take in his presence fully. “When they see what she’ll become, they’ll be proven wrong soon enough.”

In the end, Jamie could only hope. Long after they parted ways and she held the baby in her arms, it seemed that every one of her hopes for the future, for this universe, lay in her daughter.

“Hello, Kara,” she said.

***

Kara. That had been one of the names they had discussed in the dead of night, when others couldn’t see them. Had she named their daughter that? Or something else?

Arkos didn’t know. Names could have a lot of meaning. His own name...well, that didn’t matter anymore. Truly. Jamie had asked him for his name once, and he had asked her why it mattered. He was there, now, after all. Doing what he could for the world, for the universe, at large.

That idea hadn’t aged well, truly. At this point, he had done so much wrong in the name of making the universe safe that truly, it was a miracle if he could make things all right. The heroes of today couldn’t protect themselves. Arkos could. That was what he thought.

Now, he wondered if he had ultimately done the right thing.

He would see Jamie and their daughter again. He knew that. He could hope that it was in kinder circumstances, but fate had never truly been kind.

Arkos boarded his ship in that moment before heading off towards his base. He would endure. He always had.

Even if in that moment he felt his heart breaking.


End file.
